Walk around any grocery store and look at what's for sale. Lots of colorful boxes
and bags – but what's in them? Who grew the food and what happened to it between
the farm and the store? Knowing where your food comes from and how it is grown is
a vital and fascinating part of healthy living. The Kitchen Table Gazette will be
a lively monthly column that looks inside the food system and brings you
interesting facts about the social and environmental side of food, the lives of
farmers, and the connections we can make to nature and to each other through
food. We will cover the problems and the solutions facing the food system. We
will discuss the dramatic changes created by industrialized agriculture and
hazardous technologies such as genetic engineering, irradiation and pesticides as
well as bring you stories about the growing new food movement that promotes
local, seasonal, food grown by farmers who are linked directly with consumers and
who use sustainable and organic methods.
The Politics of Meat
December 2000
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, as Americans were preoccupied with turkey dinners and presidential politics, the news headlines throughout Europe were raging about new cases of "mad cow disease." It turns out that the common assumption that this frightening problem was under control was wrong.
Part of the reason for the alarm is some fairly emotional television coverage of recent deaths, from the human form of the disease, in Britain. Mad cow has resulted in 73 deaths in Britain and 2 in France and there are new cases reported every year, with infections in animal populations in 10 countries.
What is "mad cow" and should Americans be worried?
Mad cow is a brain disease known as "bovine spongiform encephalopathy" or BSE. It causes the brain to become sponge-like and is always fatal. It is also known as "scrapie" in sheep, and there is a feline form of BSE, which recently killed a lion in the London zoo. The human form is called CJD for "Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease." The disease is thought to be caused, not by a virus or bacteria, but by what is known as a "prion" - a sort of a renegade protein.
Dr. Thomas Pringle, an expert on mad cow disease, points out that all bovine by- products may be suspect, not just tissue, but also blood and bloodmeal products the dust from which can be inhaled, and possibly even dairy, gelatin capsules, and some vaccines. Deer and elk populations in Colorado and certain other areas of the US are infected with the wildlife form of BSE, and thus hunters are exposed to the disease. So, yes, Americans should be concerned.
What do we do? First, become better informed. This is a developing issue and it still involves some uncertain science so Mollie and I are bringing you this information because you may not get it anywhere else. Unfortunately, the popular media is not always a reliable source of information on food safety problems. The reason is that reporters rarely look beyond the press releases of government agencies or companies who have an interest in a certain spin on the information. A report this fall in The New York Times, for instance, said that the British government misled the public for years about mad cow disease. The government said that to avoid consumer panic and to protect British beef exports they played down the threat of the disease spreading to humans. And, as you may recall, Oprah Winfrey was sued by the cattle industry for her comments on the problem, and although she won that case, not everyone has the means she does to defend themselves.
Second, demand high food safety standards. BSE cannot be detected by any known test and cooking does not destroy it. People can be "carriers" for decades and not know they have it. The incubation period is long; it can take up to 30 years to become symptomatic. In the meantime, people with the disease can infect others, according to Dr. Pringle. For instance, he says, if they have dental work or elective surgery, the autoclave form of sterilization that is often used does not kill the prions so the instruments may remain contaminated. BSE demonstrates just how vulnerable we all are when our food comes from anonymous unregulated companies who trade in products from all over the world.
Our concern should focus not on these scary but remote possibilities, but on the industrialized food system itself. Put most simply, it looks for the cheapest means to produce food. In terms of livestock, that means feeding animal waste to animals, turning them into cannibals. Although eating meat is the primary means of transmission of BSE to humans, all forms of BSE come from the same source: the unsafe and unregulated global food supply. And that we can control, if we eat locally and get to know who provides us with our food and how it is grown.
For more information on mad cow go to Dr. Pringlešs web site www.mad-cow.org or read the excellent book by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber Mad Cow U.S.A. Could the Nightmare Happen Here? Common Courage Press, 1997.
Is the US Government protecting the meat supply?
In a survey of the USDAšs meat inspection system, the watchdog groups Government Accountability Project and Public Citizen say no.
Their report, entitled "The Jungle 2000" from the famous novel The Jungle that graphically described dangerous food safety conditions almost a century ago reviews the history of meat inspection and surveys the current system. The authors of the study concluded that the meat supply is not protected and Americans are eating dirty meat. They say that given the sheer magnitude of the problems that meat inspectors face, including intimidation by company supervisors, multiple sources of contamination such as the speed of meat cutting lines, poor working conditions in the plants, and poor sanitation and practices in the feedlots, government inspectors are spending their time inspecting paperwork and have left meat inspection to the slaughterhouses.
Copies of this groundbreaking 66-page survey can be obtained by downloading it from www.citizen-org/cmep or by writing to Public Citizen 215 Pennsylvania Ave. S.E Washington, DC 20003 (202) 546-4996.
Claire Hope Cummings produces and hosts a weekly radio show on food and
farming. She is a writer, a lawyer and is active in the growing new
food movement that is working to reinvigorate local food systems and
support sustainable, organic family farms. She has been a farmer, both
in California and in Vietnam, and was an environmental litigator for 18
years, as well as formerly staff counsel at the USDA.
Claire enjoys growing food in her large organic garden and does native plant restoration on her land in Marin County, California. She is the author of two guides to agricultural genetic
engineering, has published numerous articles on food, and is a popular public
speaker. Her radio show is broadcast live at 7:30 AM every Tuesday morning on KPFA–FM in Berkeley, KFCF in Fresno, or on the web at that time at www.kpfa.org.
